As I write this, it appears that the federal government is about to shut
down because the House and Senate cannot agree on whether to add
language defunding or delaying Obamacare to the “Continuing Resolution”.
Despite all the hand-wringing heard in DC, a short-term government shut
down (which doesn’t actually shut down the government) will not cause
the country to collapse.

And the American people would benefit if Obamacare was defeated or even delayed.

Obamacare
saddles the American health care system with new spending and mandates
which will raise the price and lower the quality of health care. Denying
funds to this program may give Congress time to replace this bill with
free-market reforms that put patients and physicians back in charge of
health care. Defunding the bill before it becomes implemented can spare
the American people from falling under the worst effects of this law.

As
heartened as we should be by the fight against Obamacare, we should be
equally disheartened by the fact that so few in DC are talking about
making real cuts in federal spending. Even fewer are talking about
reductions in the most logical place to reduce spending: the
military-industrial complex. The US military budget constitutes almost
50 percent of the total worldwide military spending. Yet to listen to
some in Congress, one would think that America was one canceled
multi-million dollar helicopter contract away from being left totally
defenseless.

What makes this military spending impossible to
justify is that is does not benefit the American people. Instead, by
fomenting resentment and hatred among the world population, our costly
interventionist foreign policy makes our people less safe. Thus,
reducing spending on militarism would not only help balance the budget,
but would enhance our security.

Yet both the House and the Senate
continuing resolutions not only fail to reduce military spending, they
actually authorize $20 billion more in military spending than authorized
by the "sequestration" created by the 2011 Budget Control Act. Most of
the supposedly "draconian" sequestration cuts are not even cuts;
instead, they are "reductions in the planed rate of spending." This is
where Congress increases spending but by less than originally
planned—and yet they claim to cut spending.

Under sequestration,
military spending increases by 18 percent instead of by 20 percent over
the next ten years. Yet some so-called conservatives are so opposed to
these phony cuts in military spending that they would support increased
taxes and increased welfare "military" spending. This "grand bargain"
would benefit the DC political class and the special interests, but it
would be a disaster for the American people.

Instead of grand
bargains of increased spending and taxes, those of us who support
limited government and free markets should form a coalition with antiwar
liberals to reduce spending on both the military industrial complex and
domestic welfare programs. Instead of raising taxes on "the rich" we
should also work to reduce all corporate subsidies. This "grand bargain"
would truly be a win-win for the American people.

Sadly, even if
a congressional coalition to cut both warfare and welfare spending was
formed, it would be unlikely to carry the day as long as the Federal
Reserve is willing to enable Congress's debt addiction by monetizing the
debt. But this cannot last forever. At some point the Fed's policies
will result in hyper-inflation and an economic crisis that will force
Congress to reduce spending. Hopefully, the growing number of Americans
who are awaking to the dangers of our current path can convince Congress
to reduce overseas militarism and begin an orderly drawdown of the
welfare state before this crisis occurs.